Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)(12)
The location for the meeting was a food service place in the main mall area. It was in a large transparent bubble in the second level of the mall, overlooking the walkways and counter service stalls below. There were multiple open levels inside, with tables and chairs, and it was 40 percent full of humans and augmented humans. As I walked through, I picked up the occasional buzz of a drone, but no pings. There were food smells in the air, and the acrid scents of intoxicants. I didn’t bother to try to analyze and identify them; I was too nervous and trying to focus on looking like an augmented human.
The humans I was to meet had sent an image so I could find them. There were three of them, all wearing variations on work clothes, no uniform logos. A quick search had shown entries for them in the transit ring’s social feed. They had listed themselves as unaffiliated guest workers, but you could list yourself as anything, there was no identity check. Two were female, and one was tercera, which was a gender signifier used in the group of non-corporate political entities known as the Divarti Cluster.
(To initiate the meeting, I’d had to make an entry on the social feed, too. The system was extremely vulnerable to hacking, so I had backdated my entry to look like I had come in on an earlier passenger transport, listed my job as “security consultant,” and my gender as indeterminate. Posing as its own captain, ART gave me a prior employment reference.)
I spotted them at a table near the bubble overlooking the mall. They were having a tense whispered conversation and body language said they were nervous. As I walked toward them, my quick scan showed no weapon signatures, just the small power sources of their personal feed interfaces. One had an implant, but it was just a low-level feed access tool.
I had practiced this part with ART on approach to the ring, recording myself so both of us could critique it. I told myself I could do this. I put on my best neutral expression, the one I used when the extra download activity had been detected and the deployment center’s supervisor was blaming the human techs for it. I walked up to the table and said, “Hello.”
All three of them flinched. “Uh, hello,” the tercera said, recovering first.
I picked up the feed from the security camera so I could watch myself and make sure my facial expressions were under control. And it was easier to talk to the humans while watching them through the cameras. I was well aware it was a completely false sensation of distance from the situation, but I needed it. I said, “We arranged to meet. I’m Eden, the security consultant.” Right, so, it was the name of one of the characters in Sanctuary Moon. You probably aren’t surprised by that.
The tercera cleared ter throat. Te had purple hair and red eyebrows, standing out against light brown skin. “I’m Rami, that’s Tapan, and Maro.” Te shifted nervously and tapped the empty chair.
ART, who was considerably faster than me at data retrieval, performed a quick search and informed me it was an invitation to sit down across several human cultural indices. It was giving me the etymology of the gesture as I sat down. You would think a SecUnit who had been shot to pieces multiple times, blown up, memory purged, and once partially dismantled by accident wouldn’t be on the verge of panic under these circumstances. You’d be wrong.
Rami added, “Uh, I’m not sure where to start.” Tapan nudged ter, apparently conveying moral support. Tapan had multicolored braids wrapped up around her head, and a blue jewel-toned interface clipped to her ear, and slightly darker skin than Rami. Maro had very dark skin, and silver-colored little puffs of hair, and was almost beautiful enough to be in the entertainment media. I’m terrible at estimating human ages because it’s not one of the few things I care about. Also most of my experience is with the humans on the entertainment feed, and they aren’t anything like the ones you see in reality. (One of the many reasons I’m not fond of reality.) But I thought all three might be young. Not children, but maybe not that far from adolescence.
They stared at me, and I realized I was going to have to help. I said, cautiously, “You want to hire a security consultant?” This was what they had posted on the social feed, and from the number of similar requests, it was common for groups and individuals to hire private security before going to RaviHyral. I guess hiring human security guards is what you do when you can’t afford real security.
Rami seemed relieved. “Yes, we need help.”
Maro threw a look around and said, “We shouldn’t talk here, maybe. Is there someplace else we could go?”
It had been stressful enough getting here, I didn’t want to have to go anywhere else right now. I did a quick scan for drones, then initiated a glitch in the connection between the restaurant and transit ring security. I caught the cameras and showed ART what I wanted it to do. It took over and edited me out of the system’s recording and cut the camera watching the table out of the system. I unglitched the connection to the ring’s main security, which wouldn’t notice the missing camera feed for the short time we would be here. I said, “It’s all right. We’re not being recorded.”
They stared at me. Rami said, “But there’s security—Did you do something?”
“I’m a security consultant,” I repeated. My panic level was starting to drop, primarily because they were so obviously nervous. Humans are nervous of me because I’m a terrifying murderbot, and I’m nervous of them because they’re humans. But I knew that humans could also be wary and nervous of each other in non-combat and non-adversarial situations, in reality and not just as part of a story. That was what seemed to be happening, but it let me pretend this was business as usual during one of the rare occasions when clients asked my advice about security.